Page 92 of Bloodwitch

If she was even alive at all.

But Iseult’s voice was now dammed behind her tongue and waves of sleep were rippling down her spine. She knew this magic. It was Evrane’s, meant to tow her under where she could better heal.

She didn’t want to be towed under. Not yet. Not when Owl needed her. But the monk’s magic was stronger than Iseult’s desperation, and although Iseult tried to argue, all that came out was a distant groan.

The last thing she saw before Evrane’s magic pulled her under was darkness. Shadows skating over Evrane’s face, and over her Threads too.

Then darkness took hold of Iseult too, and she slept.

THIRTY-EIGHT

Two weeks after saving Boots, the boy helps his mother tend the dog’s wounds. Each day, they rub salve onto the stitches in his belly, and the boy knows his terrier is happy, even if his body aches and he will never walk or play quite the same. Whenever the boy is near, Boots’s tail thumps and the boy smells flickers of contentment on the hound’s loyal blood.

That monster will never get you again,the boy whispers to Boots every night, scrubbing at black, fluffy ears.I will always keep you safe.

He is lying, though, and three weeks after saving Boots, the boy kills him.

It happens when he is scratching at Boots’s ears one night. His parents sit outside the tent, talking in the low voices they always use when they think the boy is sleeping. His mother laughs softly. She often does.

Scratch, scratch.“The monster will never get you again,” the boy reminds Boots, who is curled by his side upon their mat. “I will always keep you safe.”

Boots’s tail thumps.Scratch, scratch.

Then stops.

Alarmed, the boy sits up. “Boots?” Boots does not react, and the boy realizes that the power in his veins has latched onto the freedom that thrums inside Boots.

Then it sinks into the loyalty too.

And now, Boots’s blood is slowing. His heart is slowing… and stopping.

The boy didn’t meant to grab hold—he doesn’t even know how he did it. He just knows that hedid,and now that the talons are in, he cannot let go.

He tries! He tries, he tries, hetries. His lungs billow. He even scrabbles to the other side of the tent and starts crying.

Let go, let go, let go,he thinks, terror tangling in his chest.

Then the boy screams,“Let go! Let go! Let go!”

His parents rush into the tent, Mother panicked. Father ready to defend.

But they can’t fix this, and no matter how much the boy shouts and cries, he can’t make this power inside let go.

As the boy’s heartbeats judder past, he feels Boots’s weaken. His mother tries to calm him. She hums, she holds, while his father tries to rouse the dying dog.

Then Boots’s heart stops entirely.

Yet all the while, throughout the shrieking and the begging, the scratching and the sobs, Boots stares with loving eyes at the boy. His best friend in the entire world. Right up until the last flickers of life leave him, his tongue lolls happily and loyalty sparkles bright upon his blood.

Because he does not understand that the boy has broken his promise. He doesn’t understand that the boy did not keep him safe at all.

And he doesn’t understand that the boy was the true monster all along.

The sun had fully set by the time Lizl forced Aeduan on the move again. The salves had helped. A slice of hard cheese and harder bread had helped too. But the anger stewing in Aeduan’s heart helped most of all.

Cold hardened the night. Fog rose, and they ascended ever higher until they reached a river too wide and too rough to cross. They were forced to slow and follow the rapids upstream to a stone bridge. Here, a waterfall tumbled steeply down a cliff fifty paces away, stealing the night’s sounds and thickening the fog to icy mist.

Aeduan’s donkey was halfway over the bridge when he smelled it: hundreds of scents, sharp and burning. Exposed to the night air. Even weak as his magic was, there was no missing the slaughter.